A Road Less Traveled
by girlwhowrites102
Summary: It is the innocuous little hunts that have the largest consequences and most unpredictable repercussions. How were they ever to know that a routine hunt in South Dakota could have such a drastic effect? -Oneshot. Partially AU. Concrit appreciated.-


_A/N - So I've read fanfiction for a while, never really got around to getting an account. The other day I found this old thing I wrote who-knows-when (I was probably procrastinating on an essay, knowing myself), decided I wanted to clean up the spelling and grammar mistakes and after I went to all that trouble I figured why not post it? Looking back, I'm not really sure where I was going with it when I wrote it, and it gets kind of ramble-y at parts, but overall I like it. Let me know if it's good/bad/what I can improve on. Thanks, and enjoy._

_Word Count:: 5279; Partially AU; __Some cursing and minor blood/violence._

_Disclaimer:: I do not own Supernatural or any of its characters. All places/OCs are fictional, and any likeness to real places/people are unintentional.  
_

* * *

Fierce golden eyes bored into his, something foreboding lurking in their depths, something hateful. It moved too fast for him to stop it or run from its path, was too strong for him to try and fight it off.

The beast landed on him with a snarl, clearly angry about something, and a scream ripped from his throat as its claws dug into his chest, biting deep. Pain blossomed throughout his limbs and addled his brain. Distantly, in the back of his mind, one thought ran through his head like a mantra: _I can't die here. Not today. Not now. I wasn't meant for this, I know I wasn't. Why me? Why? Why…_

* * *

It was an average hunt – a wendigo just starting to get its claws into some of the local population of the small town known as Green Hills in South Dakota. Everything had been going well and none of the Winchester men had been hurt so that was always good.

It was when Sam and Dean – eighteen and twenty-two respectively – had cornered the thing to torch it that things got a bit complicated. A kid had wandered into the clearing exactly then – because that was their luck, it always was - and the wendigo had been drawn to him like an ant to honey. The damn boy had been lucky that Dean managed to gas and light the creature as it passed before it could make him its next meal.

The boy hadn't reacted well to the experience, jabbering and shouting about kidnapping and how he had to have been drugged and they would have hell to pay when he got a lawyer or two on the case. He stopped when Dean, tired of his rambling, had shoved him to the ground hard. The boy (teen, really; he was probably Sam's age) had of course retaliated in the only way a sane young man would and promptly punched Dean in the face.

That hadn't made John very happy when he trudged into the clearing ten minutes later, stopping in his announcement that the wendigo had managed to kill two more people before they killed it. He frowned when he saw Sam trying to keep Dean, a bruise forming on the older son's face, and a furious-looking teenager from full-on brawling in the middle of the forest.

John and the male – eventually identified as Riley King – had…spoken (in the loud, shouting manner that very quickly seemed to be inescapable where the black-haired teen was concerned) for about two minutes before Riley gave an ultimatum; he would refrain from reporting the Winchester men to the cops and suing them for everything they had as long as they would 'stay the fuck away from me and get off my property before I change my mind!'

And Riley had stalked off into the trees, presumably back to his house, and the Winchesters had returned to their motel to rest before checking out the house of the last victims, an older couple that the wendigo had gotten to just before the hunt began in earnest.

When the morning came, bright and slightly damp, Sam waited in the Impala while Dean and John went up to the front door. They were dressed in cheap suits, on the off chance that someone was inside the Poole house, even though the only living relative the two had was a son who had moved to Florida five years previously after graduating from high school.

The Winchesters were of course then very surprised when the door was pulled open after Dean rang the doorbell a few times. They all shared a frown when the one to answer the door was none other than temperamental Riley King.

Sam had joined his brother and father because he was not going to miss what was bound to be an interesting conversation at the very least. It only became more so when King insisted that he was the Pooles' son, despite the fact that he looked nothing like Ellen or Alexander. The husband and wife had both been on the shorter side, brown-eyed with red and blond hair respectively. Riley was tall, dark-haired and had eyes of a stormy blue-gray. Dean pointed out as much.

Sam had hidden a smile and a chuckle when Riley had sarcastically drawled, '_Nooo, you don't say? I hadn't realized!_' and haughtily gone on to explain how he had become an emancipated minor at the age of fifteen, moved to Green Hills to escape from the bad memories the Fletchers (his adoptive parents, from what Sam garnered) and the Pooles had given him a place to stay and a real family for the first time in his life.

The Winchesters all felt a little guilty when the eighteen-year-old then asked why they were asking about Ellen and Alexander and if they knew where the kindly couple had disappeared to that morning. His animosity towards the Winchesters seemed to have died down with some proper sleep and the cup of steaming coffee he had been nursing since before their arrival.

When they broke the news to him, Riley just got very quiet and set down his coffee mug and laced his hands together, pressing the woven fingers against his mouth and chin. His eyes were downcast. A tear dropped silently onto the carpet and his shoulders trembled before he hung his head.

John apologized in his gruff manner for bringing the news and left the room. Dean and Sam remained to offer what consolation they could. Dean, especially, since he had lost a parent he cared deeply for too. But eventually he left too, after giving Riley his phone number in case the younger male ever needed someone to talk to. You never knew, a tragedy like this had caused a few vengeful spirits before, and Dean certainly didn't need more of those.

Sam stayed behind a bit longer, and when Riley quietly, shakily announced that he had applied to college for them – gotten a full ride to _Harvard_ even – for the sole purpose of becoming someone they could be proud of, then asked what in the world he was supposed to do now that his drive, his reason for trying was gone, Sam confided his own secret plans for Stanford to the other boy. He told him that he had to go through with it and keep being the someone that had made the Pooles proud. Then the youngest Winchester offered his condolences, gave his own phone number in case Dean was too rough around the edges for Riley, and left.

They all kept in touch for a while, Dean and Sam working together to help Riley through the cops' fruitless search for the Pooles that dragged at the kid's spirit and Sam took over when Riley got too 'chick flick-y' for Dean.

Then college started and the Winchesters broke apart and Sam and Dean didn't talk to Riley together again. Riley seemed to understand, and while he kept talking to both of the brothers he never told one about the other and pretended like they had fallen out of touch when one asked about the other.

Life moved on. Dean kept hunting with John, Sam worked his way through first one, then two years at Stanford. He met a girl named Jess. And they all of them grew even further apart. The brothers Winchester thought nothing of it when Riley eventually stopped calling midway through his junior year, the periods between calls having already reached a good several months. And so it went unnoticed that Riley King had dropped off the face of the earth, save for the friends at school that he had made up lies to about urgent family business that had popped up.

Soon they forgot about him too, though, and the only evidence that Riley King had ever existed in the Winchester lives was the telephone number in Sam and Dean's phones that now only passed on the message that '_The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again._'

The earth kept spinning. Sam kept studying. Dean and John kept hunting and everything was good.

The weird started up after a case that Dean and John had taken up in Florida. Men had been popping up dead in locations that were less than usual (one had been perched in a tree like a bird, even) and they had suspected a spirit of some sort that was turning to violence to settle old scores. The father and brother pulled out the usual stops, and FBI 'agents' Morrison and Grover assisted the police with the case.

When, after a week, the Winchesters had found not even a hint of a clue and the police were pursuing a lead on a disgruntled drug dealer they decided it was merely a weird murderer with a bone to pick and packed up. They went to Texas and tracked down a pack of werewolves that had been causing trouble instead.

But ever since then, Dean swore he kept seeing something following him. Always in his peripheral vision, a crawling sensation on the back of his neck that he recognized as the feeling of eyes on him. It was always gone by the time he turned around. John never reported the same symptoms, and though he didn't totally discard Dean's concerns he assured his son that he was imagining it. Neither mentioned it when they both started pulling out the rock-salt guns a little bit faster than before.

The older son took him at his word and just kept working. The presence wasn't violent or dangerous in any event, merely curious, he thought. It was always just watching, waiting for something Dean didn't know.

After a few months Dean grew to not mind the sensation. A few months more and he would even admit (in the deepest, most secret recesses of his mind) that he liked it, liked the feeling that something was always there, checking up on him, caring what happened. So it made him nervous when one day, in the middle of a hunt he and John had been planning for a few weeks just outside Chicago it was gone, the watching eyes abandoning him.

"Dad, wait, something isn't right," the son commanded, only slightly relieved when the elder Winchester stopped and didn't question him but for a slight tilt of the head.

They both beat down shouts and spun with guns raised when sound suddenly erupted from behind them. Dean only got a glimpse at the towering mass of _something_ that growled low in its throat at the dying okami it loomed over. Its eyes flicked up, impossibly ice blue froze Dean and John in their tracks. In a burst of wind that had them closing their eyes to keep dust and other contaminants out it vanished, and the hunters were left with a mangled okami and questions they couldn't answer.

Dean's watcher returned a few moments later, and he wondered what could be so powerful and terrifying that even that persistent presence had fled. The thing didn't show up again, and more time passed, and Dean almost forgot about it once Bobby took over the job of figuring out what the hell had killed the okami and spared the hunters.

The eyes watched Dean, Dean worked with John, and John continued to hunt the thing that had killed his wife and the mother of his children. Sam took his LSATs.

It was a long time before Dean thought of the watching eyes again, several months, and by then so much had changed. John was gone and Sam was back and things were almost good again. It popped into his thoughts when Sam asked Dean if he was imagining things or if it felt like they were being watched. Dean didn't tell Sam about the eyes because what would Sam think if Dean told him that he just didn't care that there was something supernatural out there stalking them? It didn't matter anyway; whatever it was never did anything, never hurt anyone. Just watched.

After about a week Sam stopped mentioning how creeped out he felt and Dean stopped teasing him for it (most of the time).

The next time that Dean felt the now uncomfortable sensation of not being watched was when they were hunting the shtriga that had nearly gotten sam more than a decade before, on the night they aimed to kill the damn thing. Dean was instantly on alert, eyes glued to the television screen to try and figure out what big baddie was there this time. If Sam felt the watcher's disappearance, he didn't mention it.

Both brothers lost the time to think about the loss, however, because then the shtriga was there and they had to go in at _just_ the right moment. They did – or thought they did – until the damn thing got up again and Dean could do nothing but watch in horror as it tried to feed off of his brother again while he was incapacitated.

Every light in the room went out at once, leaving it black but for the moon and starlight streaming in through the window. It was just enough for Dean to make out the glistening pelt of something large as it crowded into the room. Something soft brushed against his arms and face as it glided across the floor and then it was attacking, all brutal force and precision hits. Heat followed after it like a blanket.

Dean fired off a few shots – because _hell_ if he was going to let a shtriga _and_ some mystery monster kill his brother while he just watched – but not more than three, because something heavy and solid hit him square in the chest like a sledgehammer and threw him, out of breath and aching, against the wall.

An unearthly caterwaul filled the room and Dean watched in amazement as the shtriga crumbled into dust following one last shattering blow from the creature. Everything was silent, even the kid the Winchesters had used as bait just moments earlier.

And the creature – the terrible, awe-inspiring creature that had just saved them for whatever reason – stood silently in the middle of the room. Its shoulders (or what Dean thought were shoulders, even though they hunched high and narrow over its head and arced low to the ground) rose and fell shallowly, glowing faintly, as it surveyed the damage. The room felt like a furnace.

Almost as fast as it had appeared it was gone and the lights flickered back on. Dean, shirt damp from sweat and skin glistening, unglued himself from the wall and stumbled over to Sam, brotherly instinct carrying him blindly through the check on Sam's welfare. He paused when Sam lifted his hand, a large, pale, grayish feather pinched between his fingers.

The ever-present eyes returned as Sam broke the silence: "Do you think we could use this to summon it somehow?"

The brothers had to put the summoning on hold for a short while, as soon after they had received an emergency call to deal with a rugaru nest about two hundred miles north. By the time that case was finished, they had mostly forgotten about the feather and were already following a new lead. The feather sat in the trunk of the Impala, tucked between a few seldom-scanned pages of John Winchester's journal. For about a week, before it was mysteriously gone with only a puddle and a few wrinkled pages to mark its presence.

It was years before the eyes left them next. Dean was lost from their vision, because whatever the thing was he doubted it wanted to follow him down to the bowels of Hell for the sole purpose of ensuring his safety when that was anything but possible. And so Sam carried the burden of the all-following eyes for a time, before they grew softer, watching but not always paying attention.

They left him the night he almost went to kill the crossroads demon, stopped by a whisper on the wind that said _Don't give up don't lose hope they are saving him I trust them to do that_. And when he got drunk enough to think about maybe going anyway, damn the imaginary voice, it whispered, still soft and gentle, _You are better than this where is the Winchester I know?_

Sam pulled it together. The eyes came back, intent and focused as ever. When the eyes went away again and the voice came back, told him to go to Bobby and find something to keep himself sane, he did just that and Bobby gave him a bear hug and told him never to scare him like that again.

The eyes didn't leave him for months after that, and the voice never came back. Three months later Sam tested the too-good-to-be-true Dean in every way he could think and Bobby did too until it was so very sure and Sam just hugged his brother and cried like he had wanted to since he first found out Dean had traded his soul away for him.

That night, lying in beds separated from two low nightstands and a few feet of bare floor, Dean asked Sam if the eyes had watched over him while Dean couldn't, and the elder confessed that it felt so nice to have them on him again.

The eyes, save for a handful of tiny instances that really were negligible in the long run, had become a new constant in their lives, one topped only by the Impala's unshakeable certainty.

The watcher made himself known the day that Dean and Sam and Bobby went to summon the thing – _Castiel_ – that had pulled Dean from Hell, branded his shoulder and burned Pamela's eyes right out of her skull. The old, empty barn had shaken and rattled and thundered like a good, old-fashioned summoning and the doors had burst in and a quite average looking man had walked in. _'I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.'_ Right.

Several minutes later the watcher had flat out gone, different from all the other times, where a small echo of its presence had remained. A second figure appeared in the open doors, all glowing eyes and solid bulk and even the self-proclaimed Angel of the Lord looked a little hesitant as it advanced.

It stepped into the dim light of the barn, and all of its human occupants were immediately fascinated by the massive silvery-gray, almost liquid wings that bloomed from the man's back and the swirling, foggy designs that were etched into his skin.

The Angel stepped forward, the shadow of his own wings revealed against the wall by several lightning strikes. The winged man glared back down, darker hair and eyes the color of ice making him contrast more than the tax accountant vessel.

When Castiel questioned him, his arrogance in the face of one of His warriors, the creature had bared his teeth and snarled.

"I am older than you, older than your Michael and Morningstar. There is a reason your humans once believed all things to be made of earth, wind, water and fire. None of you shall touch the Winchesters and use them for your petty squabbles while I watch over them. Not when it is _me_ who has guarded them and cared for them before your Heaven was threatened. It is not me who is arrogant, little Angel."

And his wings had flared, blotting out the moonlight as they stretched and stretched and stretched. With a ruffle of feathers and a small flap of his wings the creature walked over to the Winchesters and Singer, and he rolled his eyes when he was simultaneously shot by all three men. He just kept walking until Dean and Sam were straight in front of him and he stared down at the brothers and something suddenly felt right.

They both agreed later that it was Sam who had let out a disbelieving squeak and murmured about the winged man having 'the watching eyes' and had received a tiny smile in return. Dean was the one who asked why. They didn't get an answer to that question.

Bobby was the one who stabbed the man while he wasn't looking and asked him who the hell he was.

"I was called Riley, before I inherited my birthright. I am so much more now, so _many_ more. But you may call me that, if you wish."

And Dean pulled out his phone and dialed the contact he hadn't pressed in so many years (had well and truly forgotten about) and the automated message played in his ear and Riley-but-not-anymore-really let his face soften. He turned to Castiel.

"Bring my message to Raphael, Michael, Lucifer and his demons that crawl from the Pit: Samuel and Dean Winchester are not to be touched. If anyone dares to disturb _my_ world, is so arrogant as to try and destroy it for the disgrace of an apocalypse you are trying to bring about, then the full wrath of Nature shall fall upon them like nothing that has been seen before. Angel or demon it will make no difference."

Castiel had left in a flash of light that Bobby and the brothers shut their eyes against, a screech like a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards ringing in their ears and rattling the barn illustrating his anger and frustration. The angel's baffled vessel remained when they opened their eyes again and Sam and Dean offered him a ride to wherever he called home.

Jimmy turned out to be an okay guy, a little boring for Dean's taste but friendly and able to chat about just about anything. They all agreed that maybe they'd meet up again someday, and Sam even promised to go to Jimmy first if he ever wanted to buy some ad time, which would probably be never, but who knew.

Dean and Sam never did find out what Riley had meant by apocalypse, but they were fairly certain that was okay. An apocalypse didn't exactly sound fun. Life moved on, this time with Riley popping in to help or talk or just socialize in a sporadic, unpredictable manner. Sometimes he would help them gank ('_I do not understand, gank? What is a gank?_') a creature or two.

It wasn't for many years, decades, until Dean and Sam were old men with gray hair and stooped backs and aching joints who hadn't hunted so much as a peaceful apparition in a good twenty years that they finally found out what Riley was. The Winchester women were out for a spa day. Their grandchildren had just gone home, and Riley had returned, his once magnificent wings drooping and small, the color a dull, earthy brown that looked dry enough to crumble at any second without warning.

He led them deep into their own property, to a small glade of trees glowing in the noontime sun where a young woman they had never seen before waited.

She was taller, with hair the color of midnight and eyes like fire, and was maybe twenty-one. She greeted Riley like an old friend.

The instant their hands touched, Riley sort of sank in on himself, falling gently to his knees and then the ground even as Dean and Sam tried to get up and reach him quickly.

The dusty wings spread, quivered, and then burst into a thousand rays of sunshine. Dean and Sam covered their eyes. Wind rushed through the clearing, strong and insistent but seeming to touch none of them.

When they opened their eyes again, the old, frail man was gone. The new, younger female remained standing, and when she looked at them her eyes were the ice they had first seen so many decades ago. Wings the color of molten rock seemed to drip from her shoulders, fanning behind her like a cape. Her lips smiled, then her face and her whole being. Her hair looked streaked with embers and glowing coals.

"Hello, Sam. Hello, Dean."

The brothers stumbled back, suddenly standing straight and moving fast for the first time in ten years. Neither noticed the way their joints gave no complaint at the sudden movement. "Where's Riley? Who are you?" Sam asked, and his voice was stronger than he remembered, firmer.

"I am no one. Unimportant," she smiled, walking forward. "Thank you."

Dean was the one to frown and speak this time. "For what? We've never even met you before, lady."

Eyes like ice focused on him, wide and honest and kind to the point that Dean had to look away. "You did not let him die alone."

"Riley's dead?"

She didn't answer right away. Her wings swayed gently behind her, giving off small waves of heat that washed over their faces. "Never completely. He will live here," the newcomer waved her hands. "He will be happy, cared for...loved. He will be with family."

The brothers felt compelled to look back at the fiery-winged woman, and they were met with a sad yet hopeful smile. "So I wanted you to be happy, too. Like you should have been, if only for a little while." She looked away, far off into the trees like she was seeing something that was not there. "But things have turned out differently than we anticipated, and now our time is up."

"Wait!" Sam shouted, and surprisingly enough the woman stopped. "Who- What was Riley? What is more powerful than angels? Riley never told us, and no one else had even the slightest idea."

She smiled a cryptic smile and replied, "The earth under your feet, the air in your lungs, the water in which you thrive and the fire in your veins are none of them as unobservant as you think. You know yourself that the dead can manifest quite strongly. What of something that is still alive, of something that has been present and alive near since Creation itself? Riley is one of a long line, the mixed blood of Earth and Air, Water and Fire. He could act when Nature is so frustratingly bound by rules and laws that cannot be broken."

Again, the icy eyes looked into the distance.

"And who are you?"

"A grandmother who wanted nothing more than to protect her grandson but could not. Thank you."

They didn't get another chance to ask questions as they were engulfed in a light like nothing they had ever seen before.

* * *

Dean shouted and fumbled with the makeshift flamethrower and Sam made a beeline for the teen. The wendigo, complete focus on its new prey, paid them no heed.

The flame caught a second too late, Sam's feet carried him just a fraction too slow. By the time it went up like an accelerant-drenched pyre, the wendigo had its claws buried deep in the boy and he was crying and coughing up blood and clutching at his midsection; things didn't look good.

After some coaxing, the boy wheezed out a name – Riley King (_'ev'r'one calls me Rye, though'_). His hands, drenched red by his own blood, grabbed blindly and Dean and Sam each grabbed one as they applied pressure to try and staunch the bleeding. They tried to find out more – if Riley had parents they could call, friends, someone they should get in contact with – but didn't get much. Riley was from Maine and eighteen years old and he didn't want to say much else.

After about a minute the boy stopped shaking and his labored breaths ceased. Glassy brown eyes stared up at nothing, and neither brother understood why he thought the eyes should have been a stormy blue.

John was worried when he finally found his sons, inquiring nervously about their bloodied hands and clothes. He merely sighed when the other teen was revealed and picked him up himself.

They stopped at the closest house, owned by a middle-aged couple, the Pooles. They called 9-1-1 at the Winchesters' insistence, let them wait in their yard until the father and sons could explain to the EMTs who arrived about the bear attack they thought they had stumbled onto.

They stuck around long enough to see the boy cremated (John wanted to prevent a spirit they would have to handle later) and his ashes sprinkled into a nearby river (at Sam's request). The youngest hunter said that it just felt like what they had to do. He didn't mention how it was because he felt like in death the mysterious Riley had to be a part of something still living.

For the Winchesters, life moved on. Sam went to Stanford, renounced his hunting roots. Dean and John kept at it, a father-son duo to be proud of.

Then John disappeared and Dean fetched Sam and it all went to hell.

But far off, in a place that few knew about and even fewer visited, a blade made of ores gathered by Wind's careful hands was forged with Fire's heat, tempered in Water's embrace and sharpened by Earth's rough fingers.

When a demon clawed her way out of Hell with the Winchesters on her mind she was stopped by a woman with flames in her eyes and the crackle of a wildfire in her voice, presented with the weapon. The woman was gone before she could blink, disappeared in a wave of impossible heat and shimmering air that left her wondering.

It was all of three days before she found out the blade's unique properties, and the rest of her days were spent wondering and theorizing about the maker and the giver, never knowing but never pressing too far for knowledge, never taking the gift for granted.

And when it fell into the Winchesters' hands at last, it was on the day that Fire incarnate nodded to herself and disappeared in the blink of an eye to her molten home. All that remained of her presence was a small puff of air and a wave of heat, a small patch of soot on the ground where her feet had been.

Her debt of gratitude was repaid. What happened next was up to the Winchesters.


End file.
